Invasion risk by fruit trees mealybug Rastrococcus invadens (Williams) (Homoptera: Pseudococcidae) under climate warming

The mango mealybug Rastrococcus invadens (Williams) (Homoptera: Pseudococcidae) is a destructive and important insect pest of fruit trees in Africa and Asia, especially the mango. Females and nymphs feed on plant leaves and fruits and produce honeydew that causes sooty mold, leading to yield reduction. Although it is an important pest, the distribution of R. invadens under different climate change scenarios has not been established. In this study, we predicted the suitable habitat for R. invadens occurrence under current and future [two Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) scenarios: (SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5) for the years 2050s and 2070s], using environmental variables and four ecological niche models viz., maxent, random forest, boosted regression trees, and support vector machines. The performance and accuracy of these models were evaluated using the area under the curve (AUC), the true skill statistic (TSS), correlation (COR), and deviance. All models had high accuracy (AUC ≥ 0.96, TSS ≥ 0.88, COR ≥ 0.74 and deviance ≤ 0.3) in predicting the potential distribution of R. invadens. Among the four models, the random forest algorithm had the highest performance (AUC = 0.99, TSS = 0.95, COR = 0.91 and deviance = 0.14) in predicting the potential distribution of R. invadens, followed by maxent (AUC = 0.97, TSS = 0.90, COR = 0.81 and deviance = 0.22). However, the maxent model was the best among the four algorithms in predicting the ecological niche of R. invadens.